Video: Marion Barry explains racism culturism to you all

posted at 3:30 pm on April 22, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

Reason TV’s Kennedy catches up with Marion Barry to discuss his rather provocative statement about Asian restaurants in Washington DC and the need to replace them with businesses owned by African-Americans. Barry scolds Kennedy for not comprehending the difference between racism and culturism, and reluctantly attempts to elaborate … and just manages to bury himself even further:

Marion Barry was D.C.’s mayor for sixteen years (1979-91 and 1995-99), and currently he’s a city council member representing Ward 8, a section of D.C. that’s overwhelmingly African-American.

Barry, who popularized the phrase “Bitch set me up!” during an FBI sting operation that sent him to prison, is back in the news for declaring that Asian business owners in his district should be driven out.

“We got to do something about these Asians coming in and opening up businesses and dirty shops,” he said at an April 3rd campaign event. “They ought to go. I’m going to say that right now.”

Racism, culturism … it’s all pretty much the same thing: bigotry. And it’s ugly no matter what Barry wants to call it. I’d like to believe that Barry is “finished with that,” or finished in politics, but if a drug bust on tape hasn’t convinced DC voters to send Barry into electoral oblivion, then I doubt that a little anti-Asian prejudice will change minds.

Update: And just think — if the statehood-for-DC activists had their way, this could be Senator Marion Barry.

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If conservatives had had their way, we’d still have Jim Crow, lynching and a sharecropper economy.

urban elitist on April 22, 2012 at 4:26 PM

Simply breathtaking.

Until his death 2 years ago the Senior Senator in the US was a Democrat who belonged to the KKK.

Del Dolemonte on April 22, 2012 at 5:12 PM

Robert Byrd (Democrat) West Virginia was an Exalted Cyclops of the KKK.

From Slate.

Robert Byrd, the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, died Monday at 92. While he was most famous as a master of the Senate’s obscure rules, Byrd wore many hats during his lifetime, including that of Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan. What are the job responsibilities of an Exalted Cyclops?
He presides over the Council of the Centaurs and writes quarterly reports to the Grand Giant. In the Klan hierarchy, each local chapter, or Klavern, is led by an Exalted Cyclops. This member is typically elected by his fellow Klansmen and serves a one-year term.

f conservatives had had their way, we’d still have Jim Crow, lynching and a sharecropper economy.

urban elitist on April 22, 2012 at 4:26 PM

And if Democrats had their way, they would shut down all conservative radio, Fox News, eliminate the 1st and 2nd Amendment, make everyone buy a Chevy Volt, censor the internet and hand everyone a check so that we can all sit on the couch, with a couple hundred dollars worth of food stamps so everyone can have their fair share of Cheetos’s.

f conservatives had had their way, we’d still have Jim Crow, lynching and a sharecropper economy.

urban elitist on April 22, 2012 at 4:26 PM

And if Democrats had their way, they would shut down all conservative radio, Fox News, eliminate the 1st and 2nd Amendment, make everyone buy a Chevy Volt, censor the internet and hand everyone a check so that we can all sit on the couch, with a couple hundred dollars worth of food stamps so everyone can have their fair share of Cheetos’s.

The vote for him has everything to do with the fact that he enrages people like you…and that he is personally charming and brings home the bacon — the sort of thing that the poor and uneducated latch onto. This explains Jim DeMint, as well.

urban fellatist on April 22, 2012 at 4:31 PM

Thanks for the clarity. You think Mumbles McCracken is personally charming and you think South Carolina voters support Jim DeMint because he “brings home the bacon”, or something.

Now that you are formally BeClowned you can slither back under your D.C. rock.

This is pathetic beyond words. You can’t come up with a black leader since the days of Booker T. Washington? You think they were better off during Jim Crow?
urban elitist on April 22, 2012 at 4:18 PM
Thomas Sowell.
Oh, right, he’s not a “real” black person. My bad.
Good Solid B-Plus on April 22, 2012 at 5:40 PM

Clarence Thomas. Oh, right- I forgot he is not a “real” black person either.

If conservatives had had their way, we’d still have Jim Crow, lynching and a sharecropper economy.
urban elitist on April 22, 2012 at 4:26 PM

BTW- Since you are so ” in tune” with the civil rights movement at the time, you might want to check the voting records of the time and leading up to that point in time. It was the R’s who had been supporting it for years while the D’s kept voting against any pro- civil rights laws. Democrats weren’t for them until it became fashionable to be for it (and when they realized they’d be in trouble politically) in the 60’s.

I get this all the time. It was conservatives, regardless of party registration, that opposed civil rights. Strom Thurmond and Barry Goldwater — to name two Republican icons — among them. The Reublicans who supported Civil Rights were from the moderate “Rockefeller” wing on the party. You would have called them RINOs and mounted a primary challenge. The Right, regardless of party label, has always used racism as an organizing tool.

D’s kept voting against any pro- civil rights laws. Democrats weren’t for them until it became fashionable to be for it (and when they realized they’d be in trouble politically) in the 60′s.

ptcamn on April 22, 2012 at 6:24 PM

And shortly there after somehow abortion became legal, and constitutional in 1973 – coincidentally black women would stop being burdened with children…..weird how that worked out/

The mainstream media have been incredibly slow to pick up on a creepy comment by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a New York Times interview published today but flagged last week. In it, Ginsburg talks about Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalised abortion:
Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s comments about using abortion as population control raised a lot of eyebrows in the blogosphere. Over 9,236 to be precise, according to Google blog search.Huge sites too like Hot Air featured the story prominently. Even Drudge ran with the story yesterday.

If conservatives had had their way, we’d still have Jim Crow, lynching and a sharecropper economy.

urban elitist on April 22, 2012 at 4:26 PM

Simply.. you’re the most ignorant person here..

Mindful of how Democrat opposition had forced the Republicans to weaken their 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts, President Johnson warned Democrats in Congress that this time it was all or nothing. To ensure support from Republicans, he had to promise them that he would not accept any weakening of the bill and also that he would publicly credit our Party for its role in securing congressional approval. Johnson played no direct role in the legislative fight, so that it would not be perceived as a partisan struggle. There was no doubt that the House of Representatives would pass the bill.

In the Senate, Minority Leader Everett Dirksen had little trouble rounding up the votes of most Republicans, and former presidential candidate Richard Nixon also lobbied hard for the bill. Senate Majority Leader Michael Mansfield and Senator Hubert Humphrey led the Democrat drive for passage, while the chief opponents were Democrat Senators Sam Ervin, of later Watergate fame, Albert Gore Sr., and Robert Byrd. Senator Byrd, a former Klansman whom Democrats still call “the conscience of the Senate”, filibustered against the civil rights bill for fourteen straight hours before the final vote. The House of Representatives passed the bill by 289 to 126, a vote in which 79% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats voted yes. The Senate vote was 73 to 27, with 21 Democrats and only 6 Republicans voting no. President Johnson signed the new Civil Rights Act into law on July 2, 1964.

If conservatives had had their way, we’d still have Jim Crow, lynching and a sharecropper economy.

urban elitist on April 22, 2012 at 4:26 PM

Perhaps you should recall that Jim Crow (and slavery before that) was enforced by the DEMOCRATIC Party. The Democratic party has always used ethnic and racial politics as an organizing force. When Jim Crow ceased to be politically useful, the Democratic party began utilizing racism such as that shown by Mr Barry.

As proof of this – where is the outrage in the liberal press over this blatantly racist statement by a prominent politician? As further proof – you throwing baseless (and bigoted) denunciations at conservatives instead of condemning the obvious racism of an individual who, like yourself, is a Liberal Democrat.

I think that racism is evil. ALL RACISM IS WRONG, REGARDLESS OF THE RACE OF THE RACIST. The overwhelming majority of my fellow conservatives agree with me. Problem is, liberals and leftists think that some racism (such as that demonstrated by Mr Barry) is OK, or at least tolerable.

The only people who can get away with being racists are Liberals and leftists.

The Right, regardless of party label, has always used racism as an organizing tool.

urban elitist on April 22, 2012 at 6:33 PM

And if Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, we’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us… and that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2

– President Barack H. Obama, 2010

“We got to do something about these Asians coming in and opening up businesses and dirty shops,” he said at an April 3rd campaign event. “They ought to go. I’m going to say that right now.”

I’d like to believe that Barry is “finished with that,” or finished in politics, but if a drug bust on tape hasn’t convinced DC voters to send Barry into electoral oblivion, then I doubt that a little anti-Asian prejudice will change minds.

A couple of points.

First, it isn’t as if Marion Barry is fresh out of prison. I’m not sure how much relevance that conviction is at this point in time. Ted Kennedy killed a girl and it didn’t affect his political ambitions beyond never getting the Presidency.

Secondly, Marion Barry is politically astute. When he was mayor, he was living in a $1M home in the Kalorama section of DC. The “reformed” Marion Barry donned Kente cloth and lived in DC’s Ward 8- among the city’s poorest and least diverse sections. In Ward 8, it was/is not all that out of the norm to know somebody who did a stint in jail for drugs. And Marion Barry has not said anything that he doesn’t hear from his constituents. Ward 8 loves Marion Barry and will more than likely elect his son (also convicted for drugs) to the job when he decides to retire.

This is beyond stupid. While there is surely a huge problem with a visible minority of African Americans, the fact that most of them are middle class or higher and have options undreamed of in 1955 is testament to the success of the progressive movement.

urban elitist on April 22, 2012 at 4:26 PM

You’re going to have to offer some proof of that assertion. It seems more like wishful thinking on your part. (Or just standard progressive lying.)

If conservatives had had their way, we’d still have Jim Crow, lynching and a sharecropper economy.urban elitist on April 22, 2012 at 4:26 PM

So…what was it you were saying about ‘stereotyping’? Or is it simply a way of life for you ‘progressive’ racists?

The difference — Barry has no handlers, but Berry does. We’ve watched an obligatory Beer Summit, where Berry walks back his shot off mouth — too many times. [One wonders whether Sgt. Crowley will be voting for O this time around…]

I respectfully disagree. You can see from the above thread how easily his (her? its?) feeble arguments were shredded by a combination of facts and logic. To me, it really feels good to take an intellectual snob like Urban Elitist and (metaphorically) crush him/her/it into the dirt.

The best way to demonstrate the intellectual and moral superiority of our arguments is to prove them superior in the marketplace of ideas. As the above thread shows, we are doing this. Having a tackling dummy like Urban Elitist can actually help, when we swat down their lame sophisms.

korean shop owners were quite the targets-and they knew beforehand they would be- during the 1992 riots maxi-pads waters (Black Panther -Cali) is so proud of. they also stood up for themselves when the la police fled and left them at the mercy of a murderous mob of sociopaths who were egged on by the likes of crack pipe barry. it was the same old same old: korean shop owners, just like jews of course, were taking money from blacks and not giving them anything in return. so looting is social justice- like beating a white man near to death for being in the wrong place when a “revolution” for justice breaks out.

it’s nothing but envy-tribal based envy of another tribe whose values are rewarded by society because they are positive and do no harm to others. when your self professed culture revolves around pay back, race baiting, ebt cards at the t^^ty bar, degrading gangsta mess stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, and smoking crack with street walkers-well it says everything that a certain segment of the population would opt to continuously reward that sort of behavior through re-election. the leaders of the black community- those in significant positions of power and influence- need to address their own issues of violence, racism and sexism -the real issues within the black community that is destroying its young people in particular in larger numbers than any real or imagined deleterious effects caused by asian owned corner shops.

like all sociopathic outlooks, its the fear of examining the self and self loathing that leads to this continuous and frankly hateful projection onto others. the sociopathic behaviors of segments of the black community are destroying it with the most vocal of representatives supporting and excusing them by blaming everyone else- as if taking some one else’s store is going to cure the outrageous rates of black on black violence and the degrading spiral of generational poverty. one still hears the canard that the cia planted crack in the black community specifically to destroy it whereas it’s most apparent that it’s the radical black panther-esque quasi-marxists of the 60s who still only reinforce the most negative behaviors in order to control the people they claim to represent. projectionists supreme.

Marion Barry…his rather provocative statement about Asian restaurants in Washington DC and the need to replace them with businesses owned by African-Americans.

These race-defined human population groups or industries, they sound like Marion Barry and those who think as he does consider human beings to be like cattle or herds that are trucked in, or carted off, or shipped away on boxcar by color and shape or perhaps name and measurements.

if a drug bust on tape hasn’t convinced DC voters to send Barry into electoral oblivion…

I’m going to go ahead and broach this barricade: affirmative action has created (and certainly encouraged the continuation of) racism BY those groups who rely on affirmative action toward their own ease in life.

What was idealized at the outset as being a method to aid and assist people who claimed hardship as cause of their limitations in society has become a method that has spawned and encouraged those same persons to define AS race or BY race for assumed privilege.

Thus, people such as Marion Barry are elected and continue to be, not to mention the others like him who have made it an industrial activity to “be Black”. Their appeal to voters is that they ARE “Black” and that’s enough to key in the support.

People don’t get it. The goal of leftism in America, especially minority and feminist movements is NOT equality. It is reverse discrimination. They want to make whitey, especially he-whitey, pay. They want the 19th century all over again, this time with the dark guy (of whatever non-GOP voting race) in the mansion sippin’ mint juleps, while the white guy (and his ‘Uncle Tom’ friends or ‘vendido’ friends or whatever term for a minority that wants to be ‘just’ an American) works in the fields as slaves.

Think I’m crazy? Look at ‘hate crimes’ laws. They have the same effect as law in the 19th century. Crimes committed by blacks against whites were much more vehemently and harshly punished (often with ‘guilty until proven innocent’ as the m.o.) than white on white crime. Now look what happens if you happen to get into a fight with one of the protected ones.

Indeed, this whole racist, ‘make whitey pay’ program has been the official platform of the Holder DOJ.

f conservatives had had their way, we’d still have Jim Crow, lynching and a sharecropper economy.

urban elitist on April 22, 2012 at 4:26 PM

And if progressives had their way, many minorities would have been sterilized long ago and their unborn children aborted. With Planned Parenthood, their second goal (abortion) is nowadays being fulfilled.

You claim that minorities would be mistreated under conservatives, while those you support would simply kill them.

The Democrat Party was the party of racism prior to JFK. People thought that was about discriminating against blacks in favor of whites, but that was not what the Democrats were really doing. What they were doing was winning votes by demonizing a racial group, and the racial group they saw themselves as being able to get the most votes by demonizing was the blacks.

After 1964, when the Democrats switched from discriminating against blacks to discriminating against asians and nonhispanic whites, most of the dixiecrats switched to the Republican Party, since they would rather be with the party opposed to discrimination altogether than be with the party in favor of discriminating against them.

However, although some of the players switched their party, nothing ever really changed. The Democrats are still the party of racial discrimination, winning votes by aggravating and demagoguing racial divides, as they have always been since the beginning of the Republic, and the Republicans are still the party opposed to racial discrimination, as they have been since the founding of the Republican Party.

Amoral jackasses like Barry are genuinely puzzled when they are confronted with their racism. In their world (the Democrat Party) ‘racism’ means being against discriminating in favor of blacks.

Marion Barry is simply scapegoating a group of people “Dirty Asians” because he can’t do anything to improve the lives of people in his district. So he has to blame the “other”. This is happening at our nation’s capital. If this isn’t a sign of a country in disarray – Where is the competent representation holding public office?

Hitler did it in pre WWII Germany. Hitler scapegoated a group of people.

Mugabe, Hitler, Barry picks up on every negative historical role model. It’s probably because of his disease – addiction.

Marion Barry doesn’t have any business in public office. He should be working a 12 step program in narcotics anonymous.

See, people like her actually believe that black people are incapable of racism. They will tell you all day long that, because of a lack of power to enforce any racist ideals, black people simply can’t be racists.

The odd thing about such an attitude is that it relies on only one factor. The color of a person’s skin. Meaning, of course, that such an attitude is inherently racist.

Also remember that it requires her to completely ignore the fact that this country, in it’s most recent presidential election, elected someone who is black. What power does he lack exactly? None, of course. He has all the power he chooses to exercise and urban elitist loves it when the black guy she voted for is perceived by her as exercising that power against people she hates (i.e. white people).

But the fact that she not only can’t recognize her own racism, and will in fact violently deny it exists, shows that she deserves our pity. marion barry merely deserves our scorn.

If conservatives had had their way, we’d still have Jim Crow, lynching and a sharecropper economy.

urban elitist on April 22, 2012 at 4:26 PM

Err, it was the Southern Democrats that were responsible for Jim Crow, lynching (presumably this is a reference to the KKK, which was a de-facto arm of the Democrat party), and sharecropping which seems to me to be pretty close to the type of economy that Obama wants to bring back:workers getting pittance for their efforts and having no chance to progress beyond their current lot in life.

She set him up. Putting that microphone in front of his face and asking a question was a low down dirty trick.

forest on April 22, 2012 at 4:26 PM

Not only that, she looks like she’s wearing a variation of a traditional Chinese Qipao. Trying to goad him subliminally into making bigoted remarks, no doubt! Although knowing Marion Barry, it doesn’t take much effort. Just lett Barry be Barry and it will come out on it’s own eventually……